Doraemon
Note: This page only refers to the manga and the 1973/2005 anime. The 1979 anime is getting its own page. Spoilers are ahead, so please watch and have knowledge of the series before reading. Doraemon is a manga by Fujiko Fujio, a former manga duo also behind Q-Taro, Perman, Chimpui, and Ninja Hattori. Nobita (Noby in the English dub) is a constant failure in school, mostly getting tons of F's and never any A's. He's also a constant failure outside of school, due to always bullied, punished, or otherwise tortured by others. Then came Doraemon, a robotic cat from the future, to help Nobita through several gadgets that never always work as planned. Sometimes to the point where everyone knows about the gadget-of-the-day. The 2005 anime got a (52 half-hour) English dub by TV Asahi- Doraemon's current Japanese broadcaster (and has been since 1979)- and Disney XD. The manga is also slowly, but surely being translated into English. Tropes *All Citrus Soda is Mountain Dew: Or more accurately, all dorayaki are "yummy buns" in the English dub. *Cartoons Mean They're For Kids: Level 0 in Japan, but Level 1 in America. It's safe to assume that despite all the edits, Doraemon's actually aimed at an older audience (7-13) in America than it is in Japan (boys 2-6) due to Nobita being a constant failure and getting tortured and punished, which is (usually for the latter) a no-no in American preschool shows. *Obscurity, much?: This kickstarted Fujiko Fujio's careers, but it wasn't until 2014 that it came to America. Attempts were made, but none stuck until then. *Cartoon Network Isn't Teletoon: Two English dubs of the 2005 anime were made: the American one aired on Disney XD, while the British one aired on Boomerang UK. *Financial Failure: Nobita is a constant one. Getting pulled by the Vending Time Machine for failing to pay in "Shopping Across the Ages" is a big example. *Downwards Funnel: Nobita getting F's, being tortured, bullied, and otherwise blamed on everything... *Shoujo Jump: Having a robotic cat around and the same art style as Chimpui may make your readers believe it's a shoujo for boys. Averted with the anime. *Cute Mascot: The eponymous blue cat. *The Colbert Effect: The 2005 anime caused one for TV Asahi in America, after years of obscure anime such as Maple Town and Spaceship Sagittarius, in pretty much a similar way Sailor Moon did. Bonus points in that the TV Asahi logo (albeit without an appearance by Go-chan) appears after the credits in the dub. *The Kanade Effect: The 1973 anime was cut to only 26 compared to the over 2,000 the 1979 and 2005 anime have alone. **The TV Asahi anime cuts ending themes entirely (only applies to the Japanese version; credits are used in the English dub) to invert this. *Padding Filler Z: A rare good example; most of the episodes are adapted from a single manga chapter, meaning this was inevitable. And the results are hilarious. *Ran Out of Manga: Averted thus far, even with anime-only episodes. Since the anime is episodic and usually teaches a moral lesson, the anime would never run out of manga and would continue as long as it's in Japanese Pop culture. *I Have Failed to Keep a Secret: Some of Doraemon's gadgets. Usually it's just Noby's friends being the only ones besides Noby himself to find out, but when his parents find out... *You Messed Up, Now You're the Magical Girl: Only without becoming a magical girl. Doraemon sometimes forces Noby to study by himself, with no gadget help at all. *Innocent punishment: "Every single answer you came up with was wrong" does not begin to describe it. Doraemon even pointed out that since Noby answered "on the bottom" for the first answer, the gadget-of-the-day made every other answer wrong. And this is just one example- Noby's got a bad track record full of F's and zeroes. **"Why do I make such poor choices?" *Animal World: The inevitable outcome of using the "Evo-Devo Beam" too much- the entire world would become ruled by dinosaurs once again. Fortunately, Noby found out after accidentally turning a mouse and a cat into dinosaurs and gave the gadget back to Doraemon. *From Rags to Bankruptcy: Just barely averted with the Deluxifier's reverse switch- Noby managed to restore the status quo, but it's not said what would have happened if said switch were used on a non-deluxified object... **A more straight example is when Noby runs out of money buying a camera. His solution? Get requests from people for stuff. *Size Changing: Several gadgets can cause this. *Law of Equivalent Costs: The end result of overusing Doraemon's gadgets, most of the time. *What's with Andy's Unanswered Questions?: Doraemon's pocket holds so much stuff. How big can his pocket stretch out? Granted, he is a robotic cat from the future... **We all know what happened to Doraemon's ears- mice chewed them up. What happened to what remained? *Super Evil: The closest to this in the franchise would be Gian, but he can't really be called that. *Point of discontinuation: Only 52 episodes are available in America. They were reran in 2017 for Disney XD's Anime Block, but that was about it. *This gave us inspiration: Earlier Fujiko works such as Perman set up the premise for the show. Ironically, Chimpui- a Fujiko F. work- takes most of its cues from here. **This set the trend for many, many kodomomuke anime throughout the 1980s. Of the kodomomuke aired on TV Asahi in the 1980s, only Maple Town averted this trope, only to indirectly cause it later on... *Gainax Ruined the Ending: In a handful of episodes. *Satisfactory Conclusion: Several episodes. Stand by Me Doraemon to the entire franchise, if you count the episodes produced afterward to be taking place prior. *Werewolf Terror: Doraemon and Noby have become (were)wolves in separate occasions.